If You Don't Believe, It Might Still Find You
by RoseFrederick
Summary: Kate Beckett thought that dealing with two serial murders had already been two too many for her career.  So she isn't at all happy when bodies start stacking up where the lack of obvious death wounds and strange wooden sticks are the only clues.
1. Kate Beckett and the Mysterious Murders

**If You Don't Believe – It Might Still Find You.**

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"_Because if you don't believe in even the possibility of magic, you'll never ever find it._"

**- Castle**, Episode 3x02, He's Dead, She's Dead

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><p>Author's Note: For obvious reasons, I'm pretending that in this version of Castle's world, the Harry Potter books have never been written because everything in them has actually taken place (except that fanfiction-y epilogue of JKR's). Be aware that each chapter takes place from the perspective of the character listed in its title.<p>

Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling or Andrew Marlowe nor anyone else who owns the rights to either Harry Potter or Castle. My only profit from this is my own amusement.

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><p>Chapter One: Kate Beckett and the Mysterious Murders<p>

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><p>This was her life: another day, another murder. That was generally the life of a homicide detective in a big city, after all. However, Kate Beckett, NYPD detective, was finding this one more aggravating than most. If it was what it looked like, this was going to be the third body drop she'd been called to this week sharing the same bizarre, inexplicable circumstances.<p>

At both the previous scenes, the victims had been found in their homes, dead, with a rather unique expression of terror frozen on their faces. None of their valuables had been missing, and there didn't appear to have been any kind of a struggle, nor any signs of forced entry, which seemed to imply that the victims had known and allowed their killer in. Both of the previous victims had been found with a wooden stick close to hand – the first woman had one laying close to her open hand and the second one had a very similar item weirdly strapped to his forearm.

Looking over at one of the techs processing the scene who was photographing a very similar stick gripped in the latest victim's hand, she was sure she could actually feel the headache coming on. As if the weirdness – and Castle's crazy theories about rings of secret underground magicians killing each other over their trick secrets – weren't enough to drive her nuts, there was another problem with these murders. Lanie Parish, one of the most competent women and medical examiners she'd ever known, had absolutely no clue as to what had killed them. None. She'd even asked Perlmutter for his assist once the second vic had come in, and the snarky man had been just as stumped.

The victims were just dead. They were in entirely perfect health aside from the fact that they had ceased to live. It was perplexing, to say the least. Her friend, crouched down by the body giving it a once-over, looked like she was having the same creeping headache problem Kate was. "Definitely looks the same as the other two. TOD, I'd put at somewhere around eight to ten hours ago. No unusual marks or bruising, just like the others. I'll take her back to the lab, but ..." the medical examiner didn't bother to conclude her statement, as they both knew that it was likely this one would turn out just as mysterious as the previous two when it came down to attempting to determine the cause of death.

Kate looked up from her friend and the body, looking around to try and find where the rest of her team was. She'd sent Ryan and a couple of the unis off to canvas the neighbors, but Esposito was waiting off to the side for her to turn her attention his way. She and the team hadn't been here that long yet, perhaps five minutes or so, but she'd expected her partner would have arrived by now and her brow drew down in a puzzled frown at his continued absence. Shrugging off the minute concern, she turned to Esposito and gave him her full attention.

"Vic is a Charlene Anderson, 25, according to the id we found in the purse on entry table. Never married, no steady boyfriend, and lives alone from what the doorman downstairs told us. Works as a nurse at Mount Sinai in Queens. She has a housekeeping service come in one morning a week to keep up the apartment, cleaning lady found her like this and called it in. Just like the others there's no signs of forced entry, and nobody unusual was seen entering or exiting the building. There are some cameras in the building, and we're getting the tapes, but they only cover the front lobby and the elevators, not the back stairs, so I wouldn't get your hopes up."

As the detective was finishing up his rundown of the information they'd gathered so far, his partner and hers were coming back to join them at the crime scene. Ryan had apparently finished talking to the neighbors in the building and met up with Castle in the hallway outside the apartment.

Normally upon entry to a scene, she'd expect some kind of quip from her man-child partner. With this being the third near-identical case they'd had in a week with absolutely no useful leads surfacing, even Castle's fiercely ebullient optimism was suffering, and he had nothing to say. Ryan, unfortunately didn't have much more to contribute either.

"Talked to the neighbors on this floor that were home, nobody heard anything all night, and no one can remember ever seeing anyone coming or going from this apartment other than the vic."

That wouldn't seem so very strange – if it hadn't also been true of their other two victims. Normal people had at least a friend or two, or a romantic interest coming and going from their homes. Yet at both previous victim's places, one nicer than this fairly upscale dwelling, and one somewhat less so, there had likewise been no visits. There had been enough neighbors of the nosy variety commenting on the weirdness of it at both previous scenes to make it clear the lack of known visitors wasn't just typical big city apathy.

"All right. Let's get back to the precinct and start pulling up details on this one. Hopefully we'll find some connection between the three of them that we missed before."

They had already spent a fair amount of time so far collating all the data they could find on the first two victims. Staring at the information tacked up on the board in front of her back at the precinct some little while later, Kate went back through the pertinent facts about the other two victims in her head.

Philip Doyle, 20, was a member of a larger family of five siblings, but he was distant from the family, enough so that they were still waiting to hear anything back from them about officially identifying and claiming the body. He'd had a steady girlfriend, but they'd spent most of their time together at her place and she had been so plainly upset at his death that they hadn't been surprised to find no indications that she was involved. Doyle messed up any patterns between the other two victims – he was male, and unlike the two women he didn't seem to have any steady employment anywhere, even one of questionable legality. His place of residence had been correspondingly lower end, but he had been nearly as much of a loner as the two women seemed to be, despite the girlfriend. She said he never really talked about his family or where he'd lived before.

43 year old Amy Jackson was an attorney working mostly in contracts at Byron, Allen, and Smythe. She was also never married and currently single, like the latest victim. There'd been a sister, but they had been estranged from one another for years. Instead of her living room, Amy's body had been found in her kitchen. From the looks of things, she'd been preparing tea for herself and a guest, but had died before serving it. They'd found no one terribly close in her life, and couldn't find any indications that there might be someone holding a grudge against her for any reason. Even if she was a lawyer, she hadn't handled anything particularly volatile. The one thing they'd had any luck with at all on the case was an unidentified fingerprint on the archway into the kitchen of Amy's apartment. Unfortunately, it hadn't lead them anywhere, as it wasn't in the system.

Which left them with three victims, no obvious connections between them. Different ages, different careers, living in different parts of the city, the only thing they seemed to really share was being loners, and now being killed by the same person or persons. Why these three people?

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A/N: Okay, honestly, I'm not sure this story is really good enough to post, but I'm trying to talk myself out of leaving things forever in limbo because of thoughts like that. As always, I don't post fic until it's completed. This should be about 9 (short) chapters long. Everybody loves reviews, but I'll neither beg nor hold chapters hostage, so feel no particular obligation.

EDIT: Thanks to Talah for pointing out a stupid typing/grammar error in this chapter. Oops.


	2. Hermione Granger and the NY Auror Dept

Chapter Two: Hermione Granger and the New York Auror Department

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><p>When she'd been very young, Hermione Granger hadn't known what she wanted to be, other than <em>not<em> the misfit know-it-all. After she'd gone to Hogwarts and made friends and learned all about the magical world, she'd had several thoughts on the subject. What she hadn't really ever pictured herself as was an auror. That had been Ron's dream, and Harry's. Things had changed after Voldemort's death, though. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the wrong things had changed.

Younger Hermione had found it quaint that the wizarding world was so determinedly old-fashioned. It was only in the later years of the war and after that she really allowed herself to realize what it meant in terms of the closed mindset of the people. After all the years of watching the _Prophet_ alternately worship and vilify one of her best friends, she should have realized what would happen to the three of them after they spent that horrid year hunting horcruxes and finally bringing down Voldemort in the war-torn halls of Hogwarts castle.

The three of them had been – hounded, was the only word for it. They'd held out for months, hoping that it would go away. The boys had signed up with the aurors and she'd found an undersecretary position in the Magical Creatures department, and if they'd been able to settle in and the _Prophet_ had found something else to write about, perhaps that would have been the end of the story. As it was, one night the three of them had gotten together in a little muggle restaurant well away from Diagon Alley and realized they were all miserable with the way things were. A few drinks later, and Harry had mentioned all the offers from places around the world that wanted him to come to their departments and bring his friends if he liked.

That was how she'd ended up packing her things and moving to New York with her best friends. Perhaps they'd give it a few years and move back, but for the moment, it was a relief to be here. The restrictions between the two worlds were slightly less draconian and to the greatest part of the wizarding world here, Voldemort was just a curiosity that had happened across a vast ocean to someone else.

Trying to find her place in a whole new part of the world where she didn't know anyone was hard enough, so she hadn't really protested when the local auror department that Harry had gotten the invite from simply assumed that it would be employing all three of them. She could have probably found something else if she really looked, but the aurors just looked at her part in defeating Voldemort and were glad to have her. Anyone else would likely first see her missing year of school and lack of N.E.W.T.s and need further explanation. As far as that went, she'd done more talking about that year than she even wanted to think about ever again.

It didn't hurt that unlike those employed by the Ministry back home, the aurors here were very glad to have someone with extra experience and knowledge of the muggle world. It wasn't that the Americans didn't abide by a similar Statute of Secrecy to the ones the other magical nations did, it was more that old family blood purity nonsense wasn't quietly understood as part of the status quo. Likely there would have been plenty of other places that was true as well, but they'd wanted to get just about as far from their old lives as possible while still going somewhere they spoke the same language (well, mostly).

Despite the Statute, they were definitely a little more lenient in how they dealt with the muggles here. Back in England, the moment anything connected to the wizarding world happened in view of even a single muggle, the obliviators went out in force and then they tried to sort out what had happened after. Here, they asked questions first and decided on a course of action before they started wiping memories left and right, and sometimes they actually drew up documents to bring muggles in to their world where it could be useful. They realized here that you could always obliviate later.

Which wasn't to say that there weren't still plenty of ways that the wizarding world here was just as behind as the one they'd left back across the ocean. That combination of bendable rules and a lack of certain modern skills was causing her current job-related conundrum. A woman by the name of Marie Doyle had come in early this morning to report that she'd been contacted by the NYPD about the murder of her brother, a wizard.

It wouldn't be too terribly interesting to the auror office if she hadn't gone in to claim the body and realized that he was quite plainly dead of an _avada kedavra_ curse. Which left some choices to be made on Hermione's end. They could do as the Ministry back home would and just obliviate the detectives involved with abandon – but in the modern day with electronic files that could be a tricky business to make sure they'd gotten everything. They could go in the complete opposite direction and get a waiver for the detective in charge of the case and let them get on with their investigation in partnership with someone from the magical world – though they would do some fairly thorough background checks before taking any such action, of course.

There was a third, more moderate approach that she was far more tempted by than either of the extremes. Send someone from their department in to investigate the investigation into the murder and figure out whether those involved would be an asset or a liability. It would also tell them the likelihood that the investigation might run across anything that it shouldn't about the magical world. Ms. Doyle made that sound unlikely, since her brother preferred to live almost entirely in the muggle world, but it wasn't a possibility to be lightly discounted.

They couldn't just leave things to their natural course, despite the fact that there would be no way the muggles would be able to figure out a murder caused by the killing curse. The modern muggle world did not like a unsolvable mystery. It was one thing to be said for indiscriminate obliviation – that left its own questions, but usually less dangerous ones. All other considerations aside, the aurors should be doing their own investigation looking into it.

It was her call to make, since the woman had come to her. She did give each of the possible solutions a few moments thought, tallying up the pros and cons. When it came down to it, though, she already knew how she wanted to proceed.


	3. Harry Potter and an Evening at the 12th

Chapter Three: Harry Potter and an Evening at the 12th

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><p>Hermione had filled him in on her talk with the grieving sister of a murdered wizard and the current situation with the murder being investigated by the muggle police. She'd asked him to be the one to look into it using his cloak, figuring that would be the easiest way for them to get a handle on what was known by the muggles and if they might be useful to the Aurors looking further into the case.<p>

Harry loved the wizarding world, despite all the bad that had come of it. Beyond all the manipulations of Dumbledore, the waffling of the _Prophet_, the open bigotry and hidebound nature of their society, and not to mention Voldemort himself, Harry loved magic. That didn't leave him blind to the faults of wizarding society, though. Yet another of which he was aware was a lack of not just modern electronics, but modern thinking. Aurors chased down dark wizards, certainly, but they never really went in for the theory of detecting crime by collecting evidence and actually proving one way or another the guilt of the accused. It was a definite lack, and one that Harry's bosses on this side of the Atlantic at least seemed to be aware of, even if they weren't doing too much about it yet, either.

The one thing that they were doing differently was sometimes allowing muggle experts to be brought in to knowledge of the wizarding world. They had to sign a number of contracts and agreements and were sometimes discreetly investigated at random intervals, but so far, the method was proving useful in making the Aurors better at doing more than just chasing down wizards that had been implicated by other wizards. They had a couple of experts already in the nature of different crimes, but as yet, they hadn't pulled in any homicide detectives. If this particular investigation looked promising, it could bring a new boon in to the resources of the whole department, and that would be something he could feel proud about beyond just being Harry Potter, the-man-who-was-hired-because-he-defeated-Voldemort.

Which wasn't to say that he hadn't accomplished anything as an auror in the months since he and his two best friends had transferred here to New York, he had. There was just a personal need in Harry still to prove himself as something other than just a pawn of prophecy or some one trick one-dimensional hero.

That was why he found himself inside the 12th precinct under an invisibility cloak, sneaking his way up to the homicide division to scope things out. He had figured he'd go in during the late evening the first time, snoop through files and perhaps come back later to check out the people themselves if it seemed worth it.

Of course that plan went by the wayside almost immediately. Despite the relatively late hour, the homicide department was still occupied by several people. In fact, a group of four was congregated around a series of white boards, one of which had the name and picture of Philip Doyle prominently displayed. His first conclusion was that they were safe in assuming these people had found nothing they shouldn't have in their investigation, as it seemed clear they had found very little at all.

It was when he wondered if maybe they had so little because they were involved in too many other investigations and actually did more than glance at the other boards that he started to think there might be something to worry about here. Not so much about the detectives finding anything obviously magical as that something really bad was going on. The other boards prominently displayed pictures of two other murdered people with wands visibly lying near their bodies – muggles aside, it was not a good sign that the auror's office had heard nothing about these other two wizards.

The wizarding world was no less fundamentally prone to murders than the muggle world when it came down to more personal crimes motivated by passion and greed. It did, however, have a markedly smaller number of random killings, and serial killings – evil megalomaniacs bent on ruling the world aside, of course. If they had three dead wizards in muggle New York, and neither the muggles nor Doyle's relatives knew of any connection between them, it did not bode well so far as Harry was concerned.

"Alright, guys, let's go over what we know again," Harry listened in as the group all stopped to look up from what they were individually doing, and the woman who had spoken moved over to stand in front of the boards as the other three focused on her.

"We've got three people, different ages, sexes, and incomes who aren't connected in any way socially or financially that we can identify from their records or their acquaintances. We've got an unknown cause of death, and all three possessing some kind of decorative stick found with the body – that Philip Doyle's sister confirms was his and not something left by the killer. Esposito, any luck on tracking down clubs or organizations that might belong to?"

"Nada. Doyle's sister and girlfriend both deny any knowledge of what the stick might signify. Same for the parents of Anderson, and Jackson's estranged sister. No useful search results turn up either."

One of the other two waited for the first man to finish and then interjected, "I, uh, talked to the owner of Drake's about them being some kind of prop or knowing the three of them from the community, but nothing. Except for the guys who do kid's birthday parties, nobody uses wands anymore, and those are usually cheap plastic, not finely carved wood. So unless there's a whole secret society of real wizards out there, I got nothing."

Harry was more than a little taken aback by that statement, even if it was obviously meant as a joke. The woman in charge just rolled her eyes and blew out a breath, obviously frustrated, before turning to the only one who hadn't spoken yet. "Ryan, any luck on the search for similar MOs?"

"Not at first. _But_ when I stopped searching for both the unknown cause of death and the wands, I did get something. Apparently there was a whole slew of murders a couple years ago in England that were eerily similar – that weird scary expression, and no obvious cause of death. No weird sticks found with the bodies, though, and no progress was ever made on any of the cases."

"Do you have names for the detectives involved? Wait, what part of England are we talking about? Maybe there'd be a connection to one of our victims there."

"Well, that's another thing. There were more than just a couple of these deaths and they were very widespread, a few here and there all across the country, in fact. The weirdest thing is that they were during a similar time period and no one ever flagged the events as being noteworthy or even related."

"Maybe it's a weird wizard cult that came over to America," the third guy, the only one not yet identified by name, said.

"Castle. Not in the mood. I've got three bodies and no useful clues, so unless you've got something better than evil wizards, I don't want to hear it."

The man, Castle apparently, started to speak, but she cut him off. "If you say a single word about the CIA, I swear..." At that, the man ostentatiously mimed zipping his lips closed and throwing away the key. The quirking of the female detective's mouth in response made it obvious she wasn't quite so annoyed as she was attempting to sound.

It was quite clear to Harry that even the man himself wasn't serious about his talk of evil wizards, but Harry was still taken aback by it being mentioned a second time. Sure, even muggle culture tended to associate wands with magic, and there wasn't much else that wands could be mistaken for, but most muggles just tended to be confused rather than to jump to a conclusion like wizards, or to look for some kind of technological explanation. Surely to go on about magic was even odder for a police detective?

As strange as it was, though, it wasn't anywhere near the most important thing he'd learned. If there were three dead wizards, that changed the urgency of this matter greatly. As much as he was confident in the abilities of his friends, he really did think they'd need the outside help on this one. It was time to head back to the office and have someone with more authority than Harry look into these people.


	4. Roy Montgomery and the Phone Call

Chapter Four: Roy Montgomery and the (Very Strange) Phone Call

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><p>A number of times over the years, Roy Montgomery had gotten calls about cases that his detectives were working from other agencies. It didn't happen too often, but every now and then it did, and he figured that by now he'd been called by pretty much every agency that might have an interest that overlapped with homicide. Which was why he was stumped by getting an early morning call from the NYAO. Firstly, because he'd never heard of any such organization, and secondly because they seemed to know all about the case that Beckett's team was currently working.<p>

He was told a team of their agents would be in that afternoon to have his detectives sign some confidential paperwork and he was to have a private room set aside so the two teams could work together on the investigation. There had been a brief discussion on whether or not they needed to bring in someone from the coroner's office. For the moment, the organization wanted to keep the number of people read in limited Beckett's team, and only grudgingly gave into his argument that as their boss, he needed to be involved as well.

Captain Montgomery did not like being ordered around on his own turf, but calls up the chain just made the whole thing weirder. The police commissioner and the mayor both told him that he was obliged to cooperate with the organization, although neither of them seemed to have any more idea than he did exactly who they were or what they were generally in charge of.

It was no surprise either that Detective Beckett was even less thrilled with the circumstances than he was. She was too professional to pitch a fit, but it was pretty obvious that she _wanted_ to. It probably didn't help that Castle would no doubt be thrilled about the sudden appearance of a mystery agency and begin spinning up even more crazy theories than normal the second she left his office and told the writer about it. It was probably a little wrong of him, but Roy couldn't say he wasn't looking forward to getting a few chuckles at her expense from that.

It was around 11 a.m. when an unfamiliar group of four exited the elevator looking around curiously. He was a little surprised that three of them looked a little on the young side for what was likely a specialist job, but he'd see what they were made of before judging them by it. Most people would never guess how useful it was to have a mystery writer working as a volunteer homicide detective, but Castle had been quite a boon to the team.

He wasn't surprised though when it was the oldest member of the group, and the only one holding a briefcase at that, who spoke when he greeted them. "Rory McAdams, Department Head of the NYAO. This is the team that will be working with your people if we can come to an agreement. I'm afraid you'll all have to sign some pretty binding confidentiality forms before we can even tell you what NYAO stands for, but I assure you, it will greatly improve your chances of closing this investigation."

"You can understand my skepticism while I know nothing about you and your organization, I'm sure."

The man smiled affably enough. "Of course. It is a perfectly understandable reaction and we do tend to deal with it a lot when working with new people. It is true that plenty of experts in a number of fields have eagerly come back to work with us again on later issues after our initial meetings with them, though."

"I suppose we'll just have to see about that for ourselves. This way," He gestured them towards the room that they'd set aside, and gave a beckoning wave to Beckett's team to confirm that this was the group that they had been waiting on.

Castle jumped up and looked as much like an overeager puppy as a man of his age could. The three detectives trailed behind him, a significantly more skeptical attitude dominant in their expressions and bearings. He understood exactly how they felt, but was determined to keep a more neutral mien himself, at least until they got through all this theatrical cloak and dagger claptrap.

McAdams waited outside the door for the group of five from the station to join his three colleagues already in the room before entering and shutting it behind him. He walked towards the head of the table in the room and Montgomery moved aside to lend him the floor. Despite the fact that all of them were generally very observant, all their attention had been drawn to the obvious leader of the group in anticipation. If, perhaps, one of the young men with the group had been waving a wand under the table performing privacy spells, neither Montgomery nor any of his team would have noticed anything.

The older man slid his briefcase onto the table, popping the catches, and pulled out a stack of forms from within, which he passed out to each of the five people from the 12th precinct. "Before we can proceed in any way, there are some confidentiality forms you need to sign. What we are about to reveal to you is very highly classified as secret. The penalties for speaking about it to anyone outside of this room are quite severe." He paused for a moment to look over the listeners in the room before continuing on. "We're here because we are aware of your investigation, and know with certainty that it ties into our area of expertise. If you refuse to sign, we'll simply have to look into the matter without your assistance, but we think that the best chance of bringing this issue to a resolution quickly would come from mutual cooperation between us."

There had been no hesitation from the overeager writer of the team; the man had already been scanning through the sheaf of papers and signing where appropriate before McAdams had finished speaking. The three detectives were exchanging glances, though. He himself was pretty curious as to what it was all about and figured on signing, but wasn't quite sure yet the best way to attempt to get Beckett into it. Letting her shadow try to nag her in that direction first might prove most effective – the man did seem to have a gift for it.

Perhaps he'd underestimated her, though. She just looked to McAdams and asked, "You can help me on this case?" At his nod, she willingly signed the papers, and the rest of the team followed her lead quickly enough. Montgomery did as well. He didn't want to be left out of knowing whatever it was his detectives were getting into.

McAdams collected back all of the stacks of documents from around the table and looked them over before stacking them in his briefcase. "Thank you for your cooperation. At this point, I'm going to turn you over to the leader of the team you'll be working with, and let him explain what you need to know before you get down to details of your case." He gestured to one of the young men that had come in with him, the dark haired one wearing glasses, and said, "This is Harry Potter."

The named young man stood up from his seat and directed a hello around the table. He looked just a bit nervous at first, though a glance at the curly-haired girl with the group seemed to encourage him and he took a deep breath before addressing them in an accent that was surprisingly British. "This is going to be very hard for you to believe, I think, so I'm just going to come out and say it. Magic is real."

His mind only just had time to register the absurdity of the statement before Mr. Potter had pulled a wand, very much like the ones found with the string of victims Beckett was currently investigating, and aimed it at the table. He muttered a word and the whole solid structure rose visibly into the air.

"That is _so cool_!" Castle gushed from the other end of the table, while the three detectives just gaped. Montgomery felt the same urge towards disbelief, and rubbed at his eyes, blinking furiously, trying to clear the image that he couldn't quite believe he was seeing.

The young man looked up as he floated the table back down to survey the expressions on the faces of the group around him. Apparently, they did not yet look sufficiently convinced, as he picked up one of the discarded pens left on the table in the aftermath of the signing and proceeded to wave his wand at it. Faster than the eye could track, the ballpoint was suddenly a butterfly, wings slowly opening and closing.

"Dude," from Esposito was the only other exclamation from his people, and it sounded just as astonished as he felt. Before anyone else had a chance to comment further, or more likely suggest it was a hoax, or begin to formulate the million questions about how this could possibly be true, Mr. Potter spoke up again.

"The ability to manipulate magic is an inborn talent only present in certain people. Many centuries ago, the decision was made for those people to go into hiding because of the fear their talents caused in the rest of the population. The wizarding world has existed as its own separate state since then. As you've likely realized, wizards use wands like mine – and like the ones found with all three of your victims, so it's safe to say that all of them were wizards."


	5. Ron Weasley and the Annoying Writer Guy

Chapter Five: Ron Weasley and the Annoying Writer Guy

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><p>Ron hadn't found himself terribly excited by the prospect of their next assignment taking them out into the muggle world. He wasn't his father, after all. Harry and Hermione were both very intrigued by the idea of working with this group of muggle detectives to solve a set of murders, however, so he didn't make a fuss over it.<p>

It was sort of interesting to note the muggle's reactions to being introduced to magic though. He had figured that they would probably take longer to accept the idea and protest a lot more than they actually seemed to. Ron got the impression from her expression that the pretty muggle detective Harry said was the one in charge still thought it might be some kind of a trick, but the mention of the case was apparently enough to put her off arguing about it for the moment. As soon as Harry gave sufficient pause in his demonstration, she was quick to interject with questions while the rest of the muggles were still gaping. "So our killer is probably also a wizard, then? I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but was it some kind of magic that killed them?"

Harry nodded confirmation to her, "it could only be the killing curse, so whoever was behind this is definitely a wizard."

"Not that I'm remotely objecting, because evil wizards! I was totally right!" This was from the muggle who was all but bouncing with excitement in his seat before a threatening look from the lead detective got him on track again. "But don't you have some kind of magic police that should just mind wipe us all and look into it themselves?"

Harry smiled, either at the exuberance or the question, maybe both. Ron thought the fellow might be a bit daft or something, but these muggles were supposed to be experts, so he'd just keep the thought to himself for the moment. At least it was Harry's responsibility as the leader of their team to answer questions, not his. Definite upside, that. Speaking of, Harry was now answering the question, so he turned his attention back to the conversation. "That would be us, sort of. We're here from the New York Auror's Office. The problem is that the magical world tends to be somewhat backward with modern thought and developments. Recent policy in the States has tended more towards bringing in muggle – non-magical – experts than mind wiping. Honestly, Aurors are dark wizard catchers, they don't know much more about solving crimes than tracking down people who've been accused of them."

The whole gang from the 12th looked pretty dubious at this. Hermione spoke up next, obviously trying to appease the muggles, probably in response to their expressions. Didn't say much about their profession that the wizarding world didn't need it, the way Ron figured. "You have to understand, the wizarding world is very old fashioned in a lot of ways, and it's safer than the wider non-magical world in some. There are certainly murders, but usually they're fairly obvious crimes of passion or related to some kind of dark wizard uprising. A situation like this with three unrelated people being killed is highly unusual. The killing curse is internationally recognized as being an Unforgivable crime, it isn't seen very often under normal circumstances even in our world."

One of the other detectives spoke up then, "So that's why we found records of a great deal of similar deaths in England a few years ago?"

The trio of friends exchanged fairly dark looks, but the man couldn't know what he was asking, really, so Harry's answer was polite enough. "Yes. That was connected to the rise of a dark wizard named Voldemort. He and his followers are very much defeated, though, so we should get more on track with what is relevant here. We didn't quite get through introductions, so I'd like to introduce my team before we go any further? These are Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."

McAdams, a senior liaison officer that the NYAO kept on hand for just such cases as these, had separated himself from the conversation somewhat since Harry had taken over. Ron noticed that the man who had ushered them in had done much the same, as it was the female detective who had taken over.

"I'm detective Kate Beckett, you met my captain, Roy Montgomery, on the way in. My team are detectives Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito. We also work with Richard Castle, who is shadowing me for his books. He's a crime novelist."

"A New York Times best-selling crime novelist, Beckett! 27 times over!" The guy pouted. Pouted, honestly, at his age!

The two detectives gave polite nods, but the novelist gave them a jaunty little wave and a big grin. A novelist? Ron didn't really know much about muggles, but after all the years spent with Hermione, he did know more than a bit about books. Wasn't a novelist someone who made up stories? He certainly didn't like how interested Hermione seemed in the idea, that was for sure.

In light of her interest, he couldn't quite help the incredulous question from spilling out of his own mouth, "You have a writer as part of your team?"

"He's more useful than you would think. At least some of the time. About my case – so you know it was a wizard. Anything more useful than that?"

Harry was the one to answer her, again. "We haven't had too much time to look into things yet, besides realizing that these murders were going on and that we should contact you. What we do know is that all three of your victims were wizards who were living in the non-magical world – which is pretty unusual, frankly, and it does provide a significant tie between them."

The one who'd been named as Ryan asked, "Is that something they'd get killed over, though?"

Hermione jumped in to answer before Harry could. "Actually, it's possible. An unfortunately large proportion of wizards and witches have superiority complexes. They think they're better than those without magic, or even those like me who are magical, but are born to parents without magic. We'll be looking into that and we'll also spend time looking into the magical portions of their lives and make sure there aren't any closer connections, too."

Harry caught Hermione's eye and took over speaking again, "We'll do some of that tomorrow, but we wanted to come here first before your investigation drew any undue interest. It is still the general policy for non-magics who intrude on the magical world without invitation to be _obliviated_ to protect the secret, and with this meeting and those forms out of the way, that won't be a concern."

"Obliviated? Is that a threat? Sounds a bit too close to obliterate, for my taste." It was the other detective, Esposito who asked that.

Harry answered, "Mind wiping was mentioned earlier? That's essentially obliviation, erasing a specific memory or memories."

McAdams cleared his throat, and all eyes turned to him. "I think that's just about all we needed to establish for now. Potter's team will do some investigating into the lives of your victims and get back to you. The NYAO does maintain a telephone number for non-magical contacts of ours," he produced a card and handed it to the muggle's boss, "so if you need to talk to them or me before then, feel free." If the indignant expressions over Harry's last statement were any indication, it was probably a good time to wind things up. None of them wanted to spend the afternoon arguing the Statues of Secrecy with a bunch of muggles.

Ron was glad the meeting was coming to a close even beyond that. He wasn't any more eager about this whole working with the muggles thing than he had been to start with, but that was the job for today. Plus, while he didn't figure they really needed any so-called outside experts to deal with wizard problems, he wasn't above wanting to show them that the aurors were good at what they did. The sooner they found this guy and closed out this mutual investigation the better, he figured.


	6. Richard Castle and the Fourth Corpse

Chapter Six: Richard Castle and the Fourth Corpse

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><p>Richard Castle had always felt like the world was an extraordinary place, full of wonder and magic and all kinds of good things to balance out all the bad. This, though? <em>Wow.<em> A whole secret world full of bona fide wizards was really out there! Oh, sure, it would have been so much cooler if he could learn magic or even tell people about it, but still! _Awesome!_

He made a little time to gloat at Beckett that he had actually called an evil wizard as the culprit to the investigation, once their group meeting had disbanded. Unfortunately, even if these wizards had wanted their assistance to continue on this case, it didn't actually seem like there was anything for them to do until the other group did a little more investigating on their end. With nothing going on at the precinct but paperwork, he headed out for the day to go home, perhaps to put in some quality time on the latest Nikki Heat.

The loft was quiet when he made his way in, his mother tied up elsewhere in some details with setting up her acting school and his daughter at Paige's house for a study group for physics. In a way, he was a little glad, as it would give him some time to temper his excitement over the events of the day. It was one thing to not tell his daughter about being involved in dangerous police takedowns - better that she not worry, after all. Not telling her about something this wonderful would be significantly harder. Although mind wiping, no matter what you called it, definitely sounded like a whole lot of no fun. Ooh, that made him wonder what kind of magical surveillance he might be under!

He really should put some work into Nikki this afternoon, what with having more time at his disposal than usual, on top of the late nights he'd been spending with Beckett at the precinct because of these unsolved murders, but he just didn't want to. The only inspirations circling his head right now had absolutely nothing to do with savvy and sexy female detectives and everything to do with secret groups of wizards that he could tell no one about. He gave a big sigh and then sat down in front of his laptop anyway, mostly out of guilt.

It was Alexis opening the door that woke him some time later. He set the laptop aside, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and saying a greeting to his daughter, which she returned cheerfully enough. A discussion of how her study group had gone gradually turned into a mutual effort to put dinner together. His mother waltzed in somewhere during the tail end of their preparations, and it looked to be a quiet family evening at the Castle domicile.

At least until his phone rang. It was Beckett, which wasn't totally a surprise as there were few others who would call him at this time of the evening. "Yes, detective?"

"Got another one," Beckett said grimly, without bothering with any pleasantries, and gave him an address. He made his excuses to his family and was on his way.

Even three years in, he still got a bit of a thrill every time that Beckett called him in to a scene. Although that enthusiasm was definitely suffering this week; he might only be a volunteer homicide detective (he was still hoping to talk them into a badge not made of chocolate someday), but he got just as frustrated when the team wasn't able to make any progress on a case. The prospect of this dirtbag, wizard or not, murdering someone else before they'd had a chance to stop him was not sitting well. It didn't help at all that the last time they'd dealt with a serial murder it had been 3XK. That was one of the very few cases that made him wonder to this day if maybe shadowing Beckett was a mistake.

He arrived on the scene of a fairly well-to-do apartment building just in time to see Beckett heading in through the main doors, and caught up with her at the elevator. He wanted to say something to at least try to get the detective to smile for a moment, if not actually cheer her up, but the look on her face was fairly forbidding. Honestly, as much fun as the meeting earlier in the day had been, he wasn't quite in the mood himself. As a result, they spent the ride up to the proper floor in a reasonably companionable silence.

When they got up to the sixth floor, Ryan and Esposito were waiting for them next to a uniform outside of one of the apartments. Ryan spoke up as soon as they were close enough to talk at conversational levels. "Hey Beckett. We called the NYAO number, too, but they said there wasn't anything they could find that they wouldn't be able to see later, when there were less people on the scene."

Beckett nodded, and Castle swallowed a little bit of extra disappointment. The only redeeming thing he'd figured to get out of yet another crime scene like this was to get to see the wizards in action.

"So what do we have?" As they'd been talking, they'd been walking into the apartment, and the question was addressed to the bedroom at large, where Lanie was standing over a body on a fluffy white bed. The expected look of horror was in place, and the woman's wand was laying on the nightstand, just out of her reach.

"Maura Jade, 25. Same as the others, nobody saw anyone coming or going and she lived alone. No signs of struggle, no forced entry – and it's pretty clear she was asleep when the killer showed."

There hadn't been much hope that there would be something new to this crime scene that they hadn't found at the last three, but there had been some. So far all they had was wizards and one lone fingerprint from the second scene. They hadn't had a chance to talk to the wizards yet about magical means of entry or any way that they might gather evidence of magic performed – although the implication had been that there weren't many of the latter. Without any idea of how the killer had gotten in, and without any obvious struggle or a murder weapon to analyze, their chances of finding anything useful at the scene were diminished. The techs were still processing, but so far nothing promising had turned up yet.

Hopefully, given a day to look over everything, Potter's team would be able to at least figure out a lead from their end. He didn't have to look at her to know that Beckett was upset that her case was resting on someone else's competence, though. As much as Rick thought of it in his own head as his job to cheer Beckett up, he knew there were some times that he really should just keep his mouth shut. As much as Beckett would probably swear otherwise, he did usually follow that instinct, which was telling him quite loudly that today was not a day for amusing anecdotes.

They did a bit more looking around the scene, but it was like the others, little to nothing out of place. Even though he was now looking quite diligently for something, there was nothing that looked unduly magical in the apartment either, aside from the woman's wand. It did occur to him that if magic was so secret, that any of the ordinary objects in the apartment could really be magical. That was amusing for a while, but after the second time Beckett had said his name in _that_ tone for wandering the apartment and poking things indiscriminately, the idea lost its fun. He really hoped that the team from the NYAO had something for them at the meeting tomorrow, or Beckett was probably going to blow a gasket at them. Not having a suspect really did make her extra cranky. Being told she wasn't allowed to follow up on the only leads they had herself was looking even worse.

When he walked in to the precinct the next morning, coffees in hand, Beckett and the three investigators from the NYAO were already closeted in the closed room that had been set aside for the ongoing investigation. When he got to the door, it was opened for him by Mr. Potter. The young man said something intriguing about the room having keep-away charms on it and went back around the table to where he'd been sitting with his friends.

Castle handed the takeaway cup to Beckett, and waited for her to fill him in. She seemed more inclined to start guzzling the coffee than to start talking immediately, though, so he went ahead and prompted in impatience, "Anything new?"

Beckett set the coffee aside and gave him a little bit of a grimace. "Not yet. Unfortunately, our friends here from the NYAO say there's no way to trace the owner of that fingerprint from the second scene with their ... abilities. It's pretty clear they weren't kidding about having few methods and little experience actually investigating crime." His detective was just as frustrated as he'd expected her to be, but she made an obvious effort to soften her harsh tone when she continued. "They looked at the Jade scene this morning and found nothing of magical note except that she had a fireplace - an entry point for their transportation network. So we've been discussing that and other magical means of entry, which they say might give us a lead."

Perhaps prompted by the underlying skeptical tone in Beckett's voice if not the words themselves, Ms. Granger, the young lady with the very curly hair spoke up to further explain. "Three of the victims had floos hooked up to their residences, and we've put in a request with the local Office of Magical Transportation for a record of recent use. They generally aren't watched terribly closely, but it might give us something – someone would only be able to enter the apartments without being seen by floo or apparition, and you can't apparate to a place you've never been before. The murderer could have been taken in side-along by the victims or someone who knew their place, so we're looking for wizarding connections for all four of them as well."

Beckett interjected, "But according to our guests, the magical world isn't nearly so organized as ours, so it's going to take more time." The detective jerked her head off to the side to indicate where Ryan, Esposito and Weably (something like that?) were deep in conference and had only just looked up for a moment from what they were doing when he'd entered. "Ryan and Esposito are passing over our short lists of business and friend contacts for each of our victims so these three can check to see if any of them are wizards."

She paused, and the obvious effort she'd been making to keep her frustrations in check faltered. "Since we're all _muggles, _we'll just have to wait for them to do that. This whole cooperation thing apparently extends just so far." Considering the Beckett glare directed very carefully not at the other woman, Castle was surprised that she looked nothing more than slightly abashed. He'd be quailing if Beckett was making that expression because of him. She abruptly got up from the table and went to join the conversation with the other detectives across the room without another word.

Castle turned to the young woman still seated at the table and was on the verge of saying something conciliatory about his partner's attitude, but she just shook her head at him and gave a slight smile. "Believe it or not, we do understand this is intensely frustrating. You have to understand, just being here is a huge step forward for the wizarding world, and something a lot of wizards would be appalled by. Many still think the best policy is obliviation and jointly-orchestrated coverups between our government and yours whenever our worlds come into extensive contact. Wizards don't much like change."

"That doesn't seem quite true of you and your friends," he replied.

She smiled wider, and a bit more genuinely now. "Well, Harry and I were both raised in non-magical homes, and Ron's family has always been known for being a bit more open-minded than most, and at least they're trying to make changes here. Back home things are so much worse."

The girl had turned away to begin a discussion with Mr. Potter immediately thereafter, clearly having wandered onto a subject she didn't want to talk more about, but Castle had been caught up in his own imagination and didn't hear a word of that new conversation. As she'd spoken those last words to him, it had been there in her eyes again, that dangling bit of a juicy story he'd caught hints of during their original meeting. Something even beyond a whole world of real magic, something more personal to the three of them, and definitely something darker.

The writer in him really wanted to start digging, but all this time with Beckett had made him a bit more conscious of the potential harm in picking at other people's sore spots. He wouldn't say anything now that could jeopardize their relationship with these people who could demand they be thrown off the case or have their memories tampered with, as much as he was tempted. He was definitely going to keep his eyes open for more clues, though. Castle was never one to pass up the opportunity of finding a good story.


	7. Harry Potter and the Paperwork Mountain

Chapter Seven: Harry Potter and the Paperwork Mountain

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><p>Harry had spent the morning at the 12th precinct, going over all the evidence that the muggles had collected so far from the crime scenes and about the four victims. Among the things they had been given, Ron had taken charge of a list of all the known associates that each of the victims had and was off to compare it with the Ministry's copy of the Salem institute's admission records. The relative size of the wizarding world was a good thing in this case, as well as the fact most wizards didn't really move around much. Considering those factors and the comprehensiveness of the muggle records for all of the people on the list, it was less likely that any of them came from wizarding schools farther afield.<p>

In terms of those records, it was more than passing strange that all four of these magical people had been so well-integrated into the muggle world. Things over here might be more progressive than they had been back home, but that was far more due to the fact that things were so very backwards there. Even with a greater willingness to interact with the muggle world, sending their children off to be schooled in magic alone during their formative years made integration very hard. Yet all four of the victims had managed to muster sufficient records to make due, and two of them had been successfully employed in very demanding muggle occupations. The whole situation raised a lot of questions, but left Harry and his friends stumped as to who to ask them of. What they'd heard from the families so far hadn't been helpful – all four had been estranged to some degree or another, and none of them had discussed with those families why or how they'd decided to make their lives in the muggle world. The families also hadn't really known much about their current magical associates, or even if they had any.

Hermione was looking into the minutiae of the crime scenes themselves. They had looked at the most recent one with nothing useful coming of it, but even for it there were a few additional spells to try and they hadn't had time to see the others yet. In addition to looking for any signs of the floos being used recently, she was also looking to see if there were any magical residues from the homes. It probably wouldn't tell them much of anything, but it was possible that any of the four victims could have been sufficiently skilled – and paranoid – to have their own warding systems installed. Knowing what kinds of wards and if they had been disabled or destroyed could give them additional information about either their victims or their murderer.

Harry didn't hold out much hope it'd yield anything, as most wizards didn't bother warding their homes and were careful about post-floo cleaning spells, but it was already clear these had not been typical wizards. Then, too, they'd been given a crash course into investigative thinking by Detective Beckett and her team, and even if she was just a muggle, the driven woman was not someone Harry wanted to disappoint by potentially missing something important. Therefore Hermione was making sure of the scenes.

With Ron and Hermione both out doing active investigatory work, that left Harry going back to the offices to file paperwork about the case. Paperwork that was just about doubled because of all the extra forms they were required to fill out because they were working with a group of muggles. This was definitely not his favorite part of being an auror, but it was like potions essays had been, you just had to get it done or someone would make your life (more) miserable.

As he sat filling in a great number of forms, Harry allowed his mind to wander a bit over his friends and how they'd come to be in their current situation so as to alleviate the tedium. They'd all had just enough experience working with the Ministry back home to realize how backwards it was in a truly horrifying number of ways. Even the rise and fall of Voldemort hadn't really changed up a whole lot of the staffing or procedures in the institution. As much as a younger Harry had wanted to believe that it was just a case of one evil wizard who was controlling the whole wizarding world he knew by fear, the older version could not retain such blindness.

Oh, surely some of it was fear and that peculiar human reluctance to go against the tide. That wasn't all, though. They had stayed at the Ministry long enough to know that as much as Slytherins were the most vocal blood snobs, they were hardly alone. No one outright called Hermione a mudblood in her new position there, but just because it went unspoken didn't mean it wasn't heard. A grand spectrum of house alums mysteriously lost her messages or were too busy for meetings she needed to have. Everyone they knew that joined the Ministry around the same time got promoted faster, regardless of what departments they'd joined. There was always some kind of reason for why things weren't working out in the witch's favor, but a great deal of them were plainly specious.

So in a lot of ways Hermione was the most glad to leave wizarding Britain behind. Not to say that here in New York things were completely perfect and blood purists didn't exist. There was a team of aurors in their own department that refused to work with Harry's team and said rude things when no superiors were around. Still, it was far less pervasive, and less likely to be the attitude of those in charge. There were also initiatives like this one they were working under to bring in muggle experts that were positively progressive. Unfortunately, it still meant a great bloody load of paperwork.

Harry sighed, signing off on yet more forms, and continued his train of thought. It was bad enough that the ideas behind Voldemort's reign had turned out to be so widely and deeply entrenched, but that was only half of the problem. There was the peculiar way that Slytherin students had been singled out as bad from the age of eleven. He'd been perfectly happy to believe it was true nearly all the years he spent growing up at Hogwarts. When the students of that house had ducked out before the final battle, he'd felt entirely vindicated and unsurprised. Even about Slughorn, who he'd managed to develop a small connection to because of the man's lingering affection for his mother. And then they'd come back, with people from Hogsmeade, to help fight off the evil wizard.

Yet afterwards, things had gone back to the way they'd always been. Neville had taken up an apprenticeship with Professor Sprout, and it was clear that the Slytherin students had been just as much the target of suspicion at Hogwarts after the war. Hagrid's words had echoed in his ears, reading Neville's letter about breaking up a group of fighting Gryffindor and Slytherin students in one of the lower years, "_There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin.*_"

That was an outright lie, though, and as dear a friend as Hagrid was, the giant had even known that. Even if it were a matter of every evil wizard having come from Slytherin, the house churned out a fourth of the educated witches and wizards in Britain, and yet they were not all running about doing evil. It made them easy scapegoats for what the rest of the witches and wizards didn't want to face up to or have to change, though. So much easier to say that it was all Voldemort and have to change nothing of themselves. Even the remnants of the Order hadn't wanted to think beyond relief the evil wizard was gone. Maybe not sticking around and trying to do something to change what Harry felt could only be a cyclical pattern was running away, but the fatalism he felt about the prospects for the future there had been the last straw on top of all the unfortunate attention that had come their way with the defeat of Voldemort. So here they were.

As his thoughts wound down, a glance up at the clock showed that time was passing quicker than he wanted it to, and Harry put his efforts to a more diligent focus on the last bits of the stack remaining in front of him. It took a couple of hours all together to fill out the necessary forms, but it was finally done not too much later. Harry sat back at his desk, contemplating charming the parchments to fly off to the relevant department, but decided that the chance to stretch his legs after all this sitting was far too tempting. He'd walk them down instead.

A couple of forms specific to the auror's department he could just drop on the desk of the head auror on his way out. Most of the rest of it was destined for the office of Muggle Relations. Unlike back home where said office had been one of those little closets where most everyone avoided having to go, here it was a proper office, though it was still one of the smaller departments. It occurred to Harry halfway there that a bunch of wizards wanting to live in the muggle world, if they had officially talked to anybody about arrangements to do so, would most likely have visited Muggle Relations.

When Harry arrived, no one was at the counter, and he was just banding his paperwork together to leave on the desk to be found later when a man came rushing in from a back room, looking flustered. Which was just as well, since he now had some questions to ask. The man patted his flyaway hair and smoothed the front of his robes down before addressing Harry.

"Sorry, sorry! A bit too much going on around here today! Looks like another set of forms from the auror office to do with the outside experts program?"

Harry nodded, and was about to speak, but the fellow only just paused long enough to take in the nod before he was off and talking again. "Fellows from the Modernization Society are all up in a lather because some of theirs aren't answering floo calls or showing up for meetings."

Harry had never heard of any such group, and it seemed like a heck of a coincidence that this fellow should just happen to bring such a thing up, yet instinct told Harry that this was relevant to his team's current assignment. So he managed to shove his way into the stream of chatter that was still ongoing to ask, "Erm, excuse me? You wouldn't happen to know who it is that's missing, would you?"

It wasn't for nothing that Harry had learned to trust those flashes of insight he sometimes got, and this was no exception. The man rattled off the names of three of their four victims. Harry asked him for contact information on the Society and made his way out of the office, knowing how he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon. At least he was done with today's paperwork. Next time, it was Ron's turn.

He went back to his desk with the intention of leaving a message for his friends before heading out to contact this Society. Hermione had returned while he had been out, and as expected, there had been nothing to glean magically from a more thorough visit to all of the crime scenes. She had also taken the opportunity to stop by the Department of Magical Transportation to see if they had sufficient records of floo use to tell them anything. Certain floos, like those in the magical schools and ministries, were always closely watched. Some of the public use floos in businesses were also generally monitored, but short of being connected and disconnected, the use of private floos was largely unregulated. The office was looking through all the official records they had for any activations of the monitored places from or to the victim's floos, but accessing and scanning parchment records by hand was a lengthy process and nothing had yet turned up.

Ron, however, hadn't returned. Whether that was because he'd found something or because it was just taking that long, there was no way to tell. Harry shared his own new information with Hermione, and the two of them left a message for Ron before heading out to see what might come of it.

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A/N: I always do a final edit right before posting, although it's usually only minor corrections. This chapter is an exception since I did a fair bit of shuffling and rewording. Therefore I apologize if there are more egregious errors than normal.


	8. Kevin Ryan and the Wizard Interviews

Chapter Eight: Kevin Ryan and the Trials of Interviewing Wizards

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><p>It had been a great thing, the team had thought, when Captain Montgomery had gotten a message from the team at the NYAO saying that they had found a wizarding link between all four victims. All of them had belonged to a club that advocated wizards integrating themselves into modern, non-magical society. Apparently, most wizards greatly preferred to keep to themselves in hidden towns and homes where the trappings of the modern world weren't allowed and often didn't even work.<p>

He wasn't going to say anything in front of the team – Castle and Esposito would definitely make fun – but Kevin Ryan thought the whole thing was romantic. No electricity, no computers and TVs intruding; all the charm of yesteryear with magic thrown like a cherry on top.

Still, it seemed that for some it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Not only were there people in the NYAO out looking to bring in people like his team to help in areas where the wizarding world was lacking, but there were groups of wizards who were becoming experts on living in the non-magical world on their own initiative. Although such a thing was still of sufficient rarity that there were support groups dedicated to helping those involved, apparently. Which was a good thing in this case, since it had allowed Potter to track down the group that their victims had all been a part of.

So here they were, crowded into the conference room that had been set aside at the precinct with a bunch of wizards and witches. There were a number of charms put on the room by the magical part of the team, both to expand the space and to keep anyone else at the 12th from noticing anything funny. They were taking statements in groups, and he'd ended up paired with Weasley, while Potter and Esposito were another set, and Granger was working with Beckett and Castle. The idea was that they'd cover ground faster in teams and that each team should have people from both worlds. Even if this group was apparently focused on integration, Potter's team felt they'd be more forthcoming in front of other wizards because of the secrecy statutes – regardless of what paperwork the detectives had signed.

It made sense, he could see that. Ryan still couldn't help but feel a little bit of unfairness in the fact that he and his partner got split up but Beckett got to keep hers. Definitely wasn't worth testing Beckett's temper to complain, though, no way.

The biggest problem with the whole setup was that the wizards all seemed, well, kind of flighty. Even after they'd been told that four of their compatriots had been murdered by another wizard, it was hard to keep them focused. They all seemed far more interested in asking questions about the arrangement between the "muggles" and the NYAO team, instead of answering any queries about the victims or their organization. From their reactions and what the group from the NYAO said, official projects like this one were still being kept very quiet, so the fascination was somewhat understandable for a group doing their own personal version of it. That didn't make it any less of a hindrance, and it was still an excessive preoccupation in people who'd known the victims in a murder inquiry. It was hardly Ryan's first time with uncooperative witnesses - he couldn't even remember back to a time sufficiently far in the past where he was surprised by evasiveness. The unusual part was that it wasn't out of guilt or avoidance or anything like that, just a weird fixation.

The oddness made him wonder a bit about wizards in general – something he'd been doing quite a bit of already. Jenny had complained jokingly last night that he was thinking too loud for her to get to sleep. After the introduction of the NYAO team, he'd just figured wizards were like any other regular people. Just with, you know, magic. Perhaps the fact that McAdams had felt they needed the detectives of the 12th to close the case should have been the first indication that wasn't quite true, but he'd been far too stunned by the revelations during that meeting to really think too much beyond the first wave of shock and awe. Even if he was a detective, it was as far afield as anything Castle ever said, yet it was true and thus a bit hard to wrap his mind around.

Now he found himself being very much thankful that this wizard's group wasn't too large, as every interview seemed to have to be veered back onto relevant topics at least five separate times. It was a great relief when they did finally get through all of them and Potter thanked the group as a whole and allowed them to leave. Even if all the sudden popping out of existence to keep the rest of the precinct from noticing them coming through was still as incredibly disturbing as it had been earlier when they were all escorted in by Potter's team via the same method. Sure, the idea of instantaneous teleportation was cool, but he didn't think it was being a cop alone that made him unsettled by the knowledge that there was a group of people in the world who could actually do it. Let alone that it was untraceable and they could just pop in and out without warning.

It was almost as great of a relief as having the wizards they were interviewing finally gone when Castle came back in carrying a short stack of pizzas. While gathering his notes to move back to the table after finishing up with the last interview, he'd noticed the writer was missing. When he asked where Castle had gotten to, Beckett said that her group had finished their interviews first and her shadow had headed out to get lunch for the group while they went over their findings. They'd gotten a fairly early start, but with as long as it had taken for each interview it was already past the lunch hour now, and a break with food was a very welcome relief.

It had been a long morning, so in deference to that they actually set aside their notes over their lunch break. He could tell Beckett wanted to protest and probably only refrained because it was obvious everyone else wanted to stop for a while.

The meal was pleasant. It was clear that both teams were made up of people who respected and liked each other, and although it had been a very brief span of time that they'd been working together, feelings between the two teams were starting to edge into the range of friendly. Ryan took the opportunity of the break to text Jenny, which Espo teased him about, and opened the conversation to mention his fiancee. The three aurors gave him smiles and congratulations on his engagement, and the conversation turned to relationships for a while. Ryan was surprised when it turned out that Weasley and Granger were apparently dating. It was hard for him and Espo to stifle the laughter when the trio was just as surprised to hear that Beckett and Castle were not. Of the two pairs, the latter definitely acted more like a couple.

The conversation meandered a little bit after that – for one, Granger was outed as a bibliophile. Potter made a big production out of telling them how, as soon as she'd realized they were working with a novelist, she'd run out to the library to get her hands on one of Castle's books. She might have blushed a bright crimson, but she otherwise took the ribbing with good grace and Castle was obviously tickled. They talked a little bit more in depth about the differences between the magical world and this one, although they got very quiet and evasive when a few of Castle's questions had lead into the subject of why they'd decided to relocate to New York.

It certainly didn't take a detective to tell that they didn't want to talk about that, but it was a detective – Beckett, to be precise – who ended the chit-chat session with a suggestion that they get back to the case right around then. The pizzas were long gone at that point, so no one objected.

In light of the known connection between the victims being the Society members they had just interviewed, they had made all of the wizards handle and sign a statement form that they could send out to the labs for fingerprinting analysis. It would take a while to get those results in, but there was a certain amount of hope it would give them a suspect. In the meantime, they discussed the information from and demeanors of the group they'd just interviewed. So far as any of them said, very few of those in the Society had any previous or current outside connections with each other. There was a sibling pair and a married couple, but other than that they were generally strangers brought together by the fact they were magical people trying to make their lives in the non-magical world.

None of them had seemed any particularly less sincere than the others, nor were many more particularly nervous. All of their partners from the NYAO had been watching for any signs of strangeness or resentment towards the non-magical half of the interview teams and hadn't noticed much of that, either. As unlikely as that had seemed with this group's stated purpose, the wizard half of their team had insisted it might still be a possibility. If the group as a whole came off well, there were still a few notable exceptions to the general lack of suspicious behavior.

Beckett's group had noticed that one of the men, a Brandon Milant, had seemed abnormally antsy when they asked questions about one of the victims in particular, Amy Jackson. Since she had been the victim most obviously entertaining someone she knew when she died, that raised their suspicions immediately, though the man had admitted to discussing things with Amy in particular more than once. They were both employed by law firms, although he was just a secretary, so it was reasonable they'd have had more reason to talk at group meetings than some of the others and possible he'd have more reason to be upset by her murder specifically.

The group with Beckett had also talked to another young wizard who acted strangely. James Ends had been abnormally jumpy ever since his arrival at the precinct with the others and he questioned a lot of the questions they were asking him about the victims. Beckett seemed sure that he was hiding something, but he didn't say anything sufficiently incriminating to single him out as anything but suspicious.

Esposito and Potter had interviewed the married couple, the Deitricks, and likewise thought that there was something fishy about them. Ryan's partner said that even if they did do a good job of sounding sincere about their belief in the importance of more wizards understanding the 'modern muggle world' they still seemed unduly antsy at being questioned about the murdered Society members and weird about interacting with him. Not outright hostile, but definitely standoffish and different than all the other wizards.

On a more general note, they had asked all of the wizards about anyone outside the Society that might be targeting it. First, because it was a prudent question with four members murdered, and also because their new wizard friends had reluctantly made it clear that in addition to the wizarding world being separate from the regular one, there were plenty of wizards who actively disliked people who weren't magical and even other wizards who didn't agree with them. That had been another obviously sore subject, as a matter of fact.

Despite the sense of the query, no one had anything useful to say on that subject. As the trio had indicated, it was obvious the Society was well aware there were wizards who greatly disliked the muggle world and disapproved of their group. Yet there hadn't been any particular threats made to them – perhaps in a large part because they did all spend their time in the muggle world. The reiteration of the idea that a great part of this secret world of wizards didn't like the people in the normal world put a bit of a damper on his enthusiasm about magic, unfortunately, and Ryan could tell that Castle felt the same way. It had come up earlier, but had mostly been eclipsed by the shock of magic and the need for more concrete leads in the case.

They broke apart shortly after getting through talking over the pertinent points of all their interviews. It seemed a good idea, as Beckett was getting frustrated with the NYAO kids. Ryan did definitely understand and share her irritation that they couldn't just go out and interview the associates of those they'd pulled in. The three representatives they were working with insisted all over again that a lot of wizards wouldn't be willing to talk to muggles, even in their company. So they'd just have to wait, and let those three look into things themselves. He was a bit concerned about how their involvement with the NYAO would survive Beckett's irritation if this case went on much longer, but he wasn't so concerned that he tried to get in between Beckett and the trio when she started in on vaguely threatening talk about her potential ire if they didn't investigate quick enough and there was another victim. They might be wizards but they were only here temporarily. Beckett was scary and always at the precinct.

At least it felt like there was actual progress being made now. They had prints from the Society members being run for a match against the one found at the Jackson apartment, and they now had names of all the Society members who would have muggle records they could look over for anything suspicious. Granger had told them they had a query in with the appropriate department about the victim's floo system use, and they had a list of people that the Society members knew were aware of their organization that the NYAO team would be looking into. Hopefully something would come of at least one of those. As interesting as this case had been, it wasn't just Beckett - they would all be glad to have it over and be able to control their own investigations again.


	9. Kate Beckett and the Closed Case

Chapter Nine: Kate Beckett and the Closed Case

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><p>Kate was completely galled at how much of this stupid, crazy investigation had been taken up by waiting for someone else to do her job. She prided herself on her ability to solve cases and to give families closure. To have to rely so heavily on someone else to investigate her case because these people were insular and secretive was a constant irritation. She tried to remind herself that it would be so much worse if she had just been ordered to drop it and her team had been left in the dark, or worse, made to forget. It didn't help. At this point, all she could hope for was something to come along to give them a quick end to this mess so that she could go back to cases where she didn't <em>have<em> to rely on anyone but herself.

It was a couple more days of waiting for useful news from the NYAO team before she got her wish. She resented them a little bit – okay, more than a little bit. Still, she had done her best to help them figure out who to ask about what when as they sought out and questioned the more traditional wizards. She could accept that those people would likely turn uncooperative if they knew the investigation was being done in conjunction with the 12th, so she was free with advice. Nothing would prevent her from doing everything she was allowed to do to help close the case, feelings aside. Even still, every time they came back saying that they hadn't found anything suspicious, she had to wonder if perhaps she'd been there, the story would have been different. The thought of going to the captain, or even calling McAdams had crossed her mind more than once.

Instead, she forced herself to focus on what they could do, which was look into the non-magical lives of the Society members. It had been a long shot, hoping that something obvious would turn up there, but at least it gave them something to do. Mostly all they got out of it was that as much as the Society members had been priding themselves on their ability to make their way in the muggle world, their neighbors and coworkers all still thought there was something a little off about them. Still, as haphazard as their understanding of all things non-magical had seemed during the interviews, there wasn't anything too suspicious in their muggle lives, case-related or otherwise.

In the end, luckily none of it mattered too much, because they got a hit on the fingerprint, finally. It was from Brandon Milant, and Kate definitely found herself hoping that despite all the shenanigans with wizards and magic and secret societies (that she was just about to strangle Castle for loving), it would be just that simple. Every lead they got she always hoped might be the one to break a case, but with this one, that was so much more true than ever before.

She called in the number they'd been given for the NYAO's contact phone, and they had a short meeting, her and the three aurors. She told them about the fingerprint match giving them a suspect and explained how they would normally go over everything about the man with a fine-toothed comb to find a way to trip him up in interrogation. Considering what they had learned so far about the magical world, she knew a lot of the regular avenues for information were going to be out of the question, but thought that the trio might have some ideas as to how to achieve similar results.

Mr. Potter went her one better, however. Apparently, because of the nature of this case – four murders – and the fact that such a thing was nearly unprecedented in the magical world and unusual in the muggle one – there had already been certain exceptions made. Since a wizard would be tried in wizard courts, they were only obliged to follow the rules of the wizarding world, and McAdams had authorized the use of some kind of truth potion on any sufficiently likely suspects (as determined by Potter's team). Veritaserum, Potter had called it. So all that had to be done was for the man to be found and brought in. Then hopefully they'd get some answers, at the very least as to what business he'd had at Amy Jackson's apartment shortly before she'd been killed.

Unfortunately, picking up the man wasn't something that she could be involved in either, since the suspect might turn to magic if cornered. They had looked into Milant's claimed job as a legal assistant and found people at the firm confirming he worked there and not had reason to look into it much further. He had only been one of many persons of interest at that point, after all. However, when Potter's team went to try and find him there, it soon became apparent that the man had used some kind of mind-altering magic to give that impression. There were records of the man working there and people that thought he did. Those people were sure they knew him well enough to comment on what he was like, but his supposed office was a broom closet and his schedule a complete fabrication. That definitely bumped the man from possible suspect to likely suspect, all things considered. As promising a development as it was, there was also a problem with it.

Considering how little technology the wizarding world used, Beckett feared it might mean the end of their ability to catch the killer. The man only had to check in at his fake job and then vanish upon realizing that they'd been there looking for him. They would just never see him again because they couldn't track a phone or bank transactions or anything of the sort. True, the aurors had implied that they were actually much better at tracking down suspects than determining them, so it wouldn't necessarily be hopeless, but she had no idea how much stock to put in that. She overestimated Milant, though. He showed up to the next regular Modernization Society meeting, where Potter's team nabbed him. He either hadn't checked in at his supposed job or hadn't figured it was significant that the investigators had been asking after him.

They didn't even end up having to use the truth serum to determine his relative guilt, as it turned out. Not that Milant gave in easily and immediately spilled his guts when they brought him in to the precinct (Granger's neat business casual top was sporting a new singe mark upon their arrival that told Beckett it hadn't been quite so easy a pickup), but the wizards had a different neat trick up their sleeves. Right after bringing the man in, Potter had pulled the man's wand out and explained he could cast a spell to make the wand regurgitate all the spells it had recently cast. He'd added that it was quite likely that Milant had a secondary wand for the crimes, but it was worth a shot and they could give that a try before sending someone back to the NYAO to retrieve the serum.

When Potter had muttered a spell with his own wand pointing at the confiscated one, it had been the freakiest thing she'd seen yet when vaporous forms came pouring out. Including vague shadows of all four of her victims, which Potter confirmed was sufficient evidence Milant's wand had cast the killing curses. From the stony face and lack of immediate denials, it seemed clear that the man had done the crimes.

She couldn't suppress the minor surge of envy that it was just that easy, so far as wizarding justice was concerned. Although she had to admit it did make her wonder a number of things about their system in terms of relative personal rights and trials. There was apparently some kind of authorization required in the use of truth serum at least, but it wasn't really clear how stringent the requirements were. She was enough her mother's daughter that the thought of how personally invasive it was had immediately come up when they'd started talking about potions and spells. Those were thoughts she pushed to one side, however, in favor of wanting to know exactly why Milant had killed four people.

The man was disdainful of her attempts to ask, but was quick enough to respond to the same queries from Potter when the wizard mentioned that his team already had authorization to use Veritaserum and only had to go back to the ministry to retrieve some to do so. Apparently being dosed with the truth serum wasn't a pleasant experience even beyond being made to spill one's secrets.

It was a simple, if ugly story. Wizard meets witch, wizard dates witch casually and then wizard discovers that said witch has very unusual ideas about how magicals and muggles should interrelate. Wizard deeply disapproves but pretends to change his views to get close to the Society members - people he blames for keeping his happy illusions about the witch he wanted her to be from coming true. Actually attending the meetings drives the wizard into a rage, and instead of the campaign of harassment he'd planned, he turns to murder.

Aside from the method of murder, and the whole business of wizards entirely, it was sadly simplistic – if psychotic - at the end of the day. Castle was disappointed, but she was relieved that it hadn't been any more complicated. The trio from NYAO seemed like nice enough people, and she didn't really blame them for the rules they had to follow. The three of them had been more than willing to listen to her suggestions, but the whole situation where she wasn't even allowed to be involved in half of the investigation was better over and done with.

Potter took Milant back to the auror's office for processing, and the rest of both teams gathered up all the evidence to be sent off to their courts and erased the whiteboards. Beckett made Potter promise to let her know when and how Milant was sentenced and he was perfectly amiable to that. Once they had everything packed up and the wards and protections on the room had been taken down, Castle invited everyone to come out to the Old Haunt for a case closing celebration drink and that was more or less that.

Kate got her phone call a week later, saying that Milant had gotten a life sentence in wizarding prison. She was surprised but gratified that it had gone that fast, although the team had mentioned that the wizarding population was smaller and less prone to major crimes even in a city like New York. Again, if she didn't half want to forget the whole thing had happened, she would have been interested to know more about their legal process.

Things went back to normal at the precinct fairly quickly, aside from a few curious questions as to what Beckett's team had been working on with those mysterious specialists closed up in a room for all those days. Of course, most of the prodding was to Castle and the boys, the rest of the homicide floor knew better than to bug her.

It took a few extra weeks after that call from Potter for her to stop dreading the possibility whenever she walked into a crime scene that it would turn out to be another wizard-related crime. She knew it was incredibly unlikely – she'd gone her whole life before now without it happening – but that didn't lessen the sudden awareness that in some ways, the world was just as fantastical as Castle was always trying to get her to believe. She'd never meant to let him talk her into looking for magic, despite all the writer's best efforts. Yet somehow, she was sure the fact that it had found her was all Castle's fault. Somehow.

Things were just finally back to being completely normal when the phone on her desk rang.

"Beckett."

"Detective, this is Harry Potter from the NYAO. We've got this case..."

.

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this at least a little if you stuck around this long, and I greatly appreciate everyone that read this - most particularly those who alerted, favorited, or reviewed. I'd like to specially thank Allen Pitt for reviewing so many of the chapters and giving me extra incentive to think back over why I'd done what I'd done.

This fic was a pretty abnormal one for me as it went from conception to posting in under a month. I think perhaps it could have used a little more suspense and mystery to better fit the tone of Castle, but I'm fairly pleased with it for what it is. Note that despite the overly obvious sequel hook dangling on the end, I have no current plans to write a follow up.

**Update 7/26/12**: The sequel to this fic is now being posted under the title _Cops and Wizards. _A few extremely minor edits were also made, including correcting the spelling of Lanie Parish's name._  
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